Monthly Archives: March 2018

Cinema is undoubtedly one of the most significant cultural forms of our age. The first moving pictures were revolutionary when they were first broadcast to the world and the cinematic medium continues to develop in all sorts of radical and interesting ways. Television soon came to rival cinema in social and cultural import and film studios needed to find new technologies to pull in the crowds. 3-D films began to appear in the 1950s and have retained their popularity since, from their use in amusement park rides to the latest blockbuster 3D re-release. Yet their apparent novelty status belies the hidden history of 3D filmmaking; it could even be said that the history of cinema is arguably the history of 3D cinema.

This week on The Provocateur I’m joined byNick Jones, lecturer in film, television & digital culture at the University of York, to discuss the aesthetics of 3D cinema. We talk about the history of 3D cinema before we jump into the theoretical and technical complexities of the 3D format. Along the way, we discuss films such as Dial M for Murder, Avatar, Jurassic Park (in its 3D re-release) and even the Resident Evil franchise.

Though World War II looms large in both the North American and European popular imaginations, the complex history of the post-WWII settlement has largely been erased from public memory. Indeed, for millions of people the end of the war was only the beginning of an uncertain future. A refugee crisis was brewing on the Eastern Front, which became a key factor in the birth of modern-day international humanitarian law. Moreover, many of those who had been caught up in the horrors of Nazi control in Eastern Europe now faced the prospect of being sent back across the Iron Curtain. The task of repatriating Soviet citizens grew into an enormous challenge for the Allies in the aftermath of the war.

This week on The Provocateur I am joined by Seth Bernstein, assistant professor of history at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow), to discuss the repatriation of Soviet citizens after WWII. We begin by talking about the Cold War perception of repatriation among Soviet writers, before zooming in on the experience of Soviet people in German-occupied Europe and the refugee crisis that followed the war. We also look at the role of the Allied war dead in the story and how the Soviets allowed them to be removed from Soviet Germany in exchange for the Allies permitting Soviet repatriation missions to enter the Allied side of Germany. Towards the end of the programme, we talk about the legacies of repatriation in the later 20th century up to the present moment and the continuing need to rectify the injustices of the past.

The Biblical story of the Garden of Eden is one of the most central narratives in Western civilisation (if not the central narrative). As part of the account of creation contained in Genesis, it is a cornerstone of both the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. Moreover, it has exerted a powerful influence on secular culture, ranging from the seventeenth-century epic Paradise Lost to modern-day advertisements. Yet scholarly critics have tended to overlook the significance of natural resources and the environment in the Eden narrative, choosing instead to focus on the agency of the human characters. While ecocriticism is gaining ground as a popular approach in contemporary literary studies, Biblical scholars have generally paid little attention to it and how it can be usefully applied to their field.

Today on The Provocateur I talk to Robin Hamon, a PhD student at the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Bible Studies, to discuss the Eden narrative from an ecocritical perspective. We start by thinking about the origins of Biblical Studies and ecocriticism as separate disciplines, before looking in-depth at Genesis as an example of how the two fields can be fruitfully merged. We also touch on notions of paradise and wilderness and how these might have affected interpretations of the narrative, as well as the significance of trees in the text.

Stroke is the leading cause of disability worldwide as well as a serious public health problem. It is the world’s biggest killer along with its close cousin, ischaemic heart disease: together, they were responsible for 15 million deaths around the globe in 2015. The most common type of stroke, ischaemic stroke, occurs when a blood clot disrupts the flow of oxygen and blood to the brain. One risk factor for ischaemic stroke is atrial fibrillation, which is the most commonly undetected type of irregular heartbeat and affects around a million people in the UK. Atrial fibrillation is scarcely discussed in popular media coverage of stroke and heart disease, but new research is demonstrating its significance in figuring out how and why strokes happen.

Today on The Provocateur I talk to Fiona Malone, a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, to discuss the silent killer that is atrial fibrillation. Join us for a lively discussion that covers the ins and outs of atrial fibrillation, the signs and symptoms of ischaemic strokes, Fiona’s research in building 3-D stroke simulations and what (if anything) cows have to do with strokes.